Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Since before I can remember I’ve been fascinated with moving pictures. There were many breakthroughs in my life. As a teenager, I discovered my love of black and white films and westerns. I watched films like CITIZEN KANE, CASABLANCA, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, THE THIRD MAN, SUNSET BOULEVARD and fell in love with film all over again.

I had weeks in my high school years where I’d hit Vulcan Video and just rent my limit of a particular director's work. I did that with filmmakers like Woody Allen and Dario Argento.

I get in moods where I just want to watch movies I haven’t seen before, but I’ve noticed in the last few years I’ve spent more time focusing on new films, movies coming out next weekend or next month, than on widening my film experience.

I compulsively buy DVDs and have a few used DVD stores around Austin I frequent. I have an addiction here. If I find a DVD for a movie that I haven’t seen for $2.99 or $3.99… I’ll just buy it. I remember when you couldn’t rent a video for that money, so I guess that’s always running in the back of mind. If I have any intention ever of watching a particular movie, then why not buy it now and I get to keep it after I watch it? It’s just as expensive as renting.

So, I figured I’d gather together these stacks of DVDs and make sure I finally watch these damn movies. I have tons of box sets, some sent over the years, some gifted (a lot of my Noir titles come from Harry’s Christmas givings) and many picked up on my weekly raids of these used DVD stores and Amazon deal prowling.

In order to force myself onto a regular schedule and to keep my every day routine from putting these films on the backburner I’ve decided to run a daily column. One story a day, 7 days a week, each will focus on a movie I haven’t seen before and watch.

My plan is to involve you guys as much as you care to be. I’ll announce the movies in advance and you can watch along. I’d love to treat this like a book club. Some of the movies I’m watching are incredibly obscure. Some are “Are you seriously saying you’ve never seen that movie?” level. There will be some embarrassing movies discussed in this column, but we all have gaps in our film education. Nobody has seen everything.

I’ve always been into celebrating movies and this is the best way I can think of to keep up that spirit on a regular basis.

Now, I originally planned to just kind of watch these movies as I felt like… kind of a potpourri, but when I gathered these DVDs together, I noticed I could start programming them in a way. I have over a year’s worth of DVDs I can watch, nearly 400 titles, so it’s crazy, but what I want to do is string all these titles together, connect them so that each film leads in some way to the next.

I’ve worked out the first 2 months of titles. Sometimes I jump from film to film via a director, a producer, an actor or a writer. I’m sure at some point I’m going to have to cop out a bit by using release years or genres, especially when I get to some of my Criterion foreign titles, but now there are direct connections, which I think forces a kind of flow to this thing.

If you want to join along, I will start next Monday with HARPER (1966), THE DROWNING POOL (1975), PAPILLON (1973), GUN CRAZY (aka DEADLY IS THE FEMALE) (1950), NEVER SO FEW (1959), A HOLE IN THE HEAD (1959) and SOME CAME RUNNING (1958).

We’ll be looking at everything from thriller, noir, horror, comedy, samurai, action, western, musical, drama of all sorts, sports flicks, animated flicks, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Ford, Wise, Welles, Wayne, Peckinpah, Bava… essentially we’re all over the map. The range of film goes from 1922 to about 2004. I’ve stayed away from most current film that passed me by, so there will only be a few from the last 18 years and those mostly foreign and indie titles that I really want to see and happen to have picked up on DVD.

I don’t know exactly how this is going to work. I guess depending on how much I like the flick and how much I have to say the daily column could range from a couple paragraphs to a full review of sorts, with the conversation continuing into the talkbacks. We'll play it by ear. The important thing is to get started.

So, if you care to join along, hit the Netflix queue or neighborhood video store or click any of the above titles to pick the DVDs up at Amazon. See you guys next Monday with Paul Newman in HARPER!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com